Armand’s First Letter. Amelia’s First Letter.
31 August 1018
3 Madrigal Court, Yorke
My dearest cousin Armand,
As you can see from the direction, Maximilian and I have made a stop with Mama and Papa in Yorke, in the midst of our peregrinations about Cumbria. It is a rest for which I am deeply grateful; much though we love our (or, rather, L’École’s) caravan, it is a joy to have indoor plumbing at our disposal.
Our caravan caused a great deal of comment among the farmers and other folk along the Cumbrian Edge, and not less in the towns; it’s a pity you have chosen not to sell your wagons abroad, for it is a vacuum that will not remain unfilled. On the contrary, the process of filling has already begun, for John Netherington-Coates has not been idle—and that on two fronts.
First, he has invested the larger fraction of his hitherto unspent resources in a new firm, Armorican Air-Wagons—the name is a rather a nice nod to you, I think. And second, he was invested the remainder of his time in pursuing your dear mama. I gather you are good friends with the grandmaster, and so perhaps this will come as no surprise; but I fear you may need to return to Yorke yet again, just to attend your dear mama’s wedding.
But whilst we were raising the interest—and, upon occasion, the hackles—of our Cumbrian countryfolk, Maximilian and I made a number of interesting discoveries.
First, we have mapped the ley lines and nodes all along the Edge of Cumbria that most closely approaches Provençe. Unsurprisingly, our results do not match the best maps available at Edenford—which, as I noted in my last, are highly conjectural. But second, we have indeed identified a dozen or so “stub” ley lines that extend roughly in the direction of Provençe.
We have naturally been working with small local charts for much of this work; but imagine our excitement as we took out our chart of Cumbria and Provençe and began to plot the location and direction of these stubs along the Cumbrian Edge…
…only to find that none of them line up with the stubs leaving Provençe.
It is most irksome, as it leaves these stubs quite unexplained!
Maximilian has conjectured that the Cumbrian and Provençese stubs, if extended passed the Edges, might meet at small landlets out in the Abyss. This is plausible, certainly—for such landlets do exist, and are largely uncharted—except that it seems contrary to the nature of the Abyss that ley lines might once have run through it, however much power might have been fed into them.
Oh, the arguments we have had, Maxmilian and I, to neither’s satisfaction; for though we hold contrary positions, neither of us is satisfied even with our own position.
Your perplexed cousin,
Amelia
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Zymurgia House 